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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087822">The Time I Have to Love You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper'>Professional_Creeper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Law &amp; Order: SVU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling &amp; Snuggling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gender-neutral Reader, Kissing, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:08:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087822</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>ADA Rafael Barba's hectic schedule has strained every single one of his failed relationships. Now he's with you, but after ditching you for a work emergency today, he knows the end is coming. </p><p>He just has to open the door and face you, and the all-too-familiar breakup fight.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rafael Barba/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Scripted Fight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the last time, he swore never again.</p><p>Things had started so well, as they always did. He was utterly in love with a kind, brilliant woman who loved him back, and this time, he thought—this time, she was <em>the one.</em> The one he would grow old with. The one he wouldn’t drive away with sarcasm and eighty-hour workweeks that took precedence over dinner and quality time. He learned his lesson from many heartaches before and knew how to be a good boyfriend this time.</p><p>When it fell apart, she ripped pieces of his beating heart from his chest and took them with her. He was less now—a walking shell.</p><p>The experience taught him two things. First, if he couldn’t make it work with the love of his life, then he had no hope. And second, he wouldn’t survive going through that again. What little remained of his heart was cobbled together with shoestrings, and there was nothing left to give.</p><p>So ADA Rafael Barba swore off relationships.</p><p>It was about three years later when you appeared, and like a fool, he couldn’t help being drawn to you. He tried to ignore it. Tried to outright push you away. Then you were tearfully confessing your feelings—the ones you weren’t supposed to reciprocate—and he couldn’t just leave you suffering from rejection.</p><p>He tried to warn you it would never work, but for each fatalistic argument, you had such sensible counter-arguments. You liked your space, so his busy schedule wouldn’t bother you. He couldn’t resign himself to being alone <em>forever.</em> It was your choice too. And suddenly, his lips were on yours, and you tasted so alive, like fresh-cut grass and sunshine. Like a yellow dandelion brightening the cracks of a city sidewalk.</p><p>Things with you started well—as they always did—with tender words, passionate sex, and his heart skipping every time your fingers brushed his hand. He never had time for a relationship, but for those first six months, time would magically appear, carved out of ignored responsibilities and sleepless nights playing catch-up.</p><p>You suggested moving in together, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying yes.</p><p>He loved you more than he thought his shattered heart capable of. Pieces he thought previous partners had robbed or stomped to dust turned out to still be there after all, alive and beating. He would feel the agony of them dying again when you left. It was only a matter of time, but it didn’t matter. All he wanted was to hold you close for as long as he could before the inevitable end.</p><p>Tonight was the end.</p><p>He stood outside the door to your shared apartment, his vision narrowed and pulsing behind his eyes. It was past midnight, and he was too much a coward to check his messages and find out if you were still there, waiting to have <em>the fight</em> first, or if you were already gone.</p><p>He slid the small brass key in the lock that always got stuck, and jiggled it until it turned. A held breath whispered between his lips as he opened the door slowly.</p><p>There were no suitcases stacked in the doorway, which was either a good sign—you hadn’t packed yet—or a bad one—you’d already finished moving out.</p><p>Barba sighed with relief to find you asleep in bed.</p><p>It wasn’t over yet. At least he had a few more minutes, or hours, or days left at your side. There came a moment in every relationship when he ruined things beyond repair, and he’d been through this enough times to recognize that his inconsiderate behavior today was it: a mistake too big to fix.</p><p>But at least you were still there. His last partner had packed while he was in court and left nothing but a note behind:</p><p>
  <em>“You said you wanted to talk about it, but apparently I need to schedule it with your secretary. So forget it, Rafa. You don’t get closure. You can’t make time for me; why should I give any to you?”</em>
</p><p>The mattress creaked as he lowered his weight onto it slowly, so as not to disturb you. Before getting under the covers, he watched you sleeping peacefully, trying to freeze the moment in his mind. He let out a wistful sigh. There was nothing he wanted more than to wrap his arms around your warm body, pressing himself along the length of you, breathing in the scent of your hair—that unique smell was the only thing that calmed him after a stressful day—but you would wake from the movement. And then you would throw him out.</p><p>He knew this fight well enough to read the script from memory. Act one: his partner sobbing, “you’re always working!” Act two: Barba promising, “I’ll do better,” then burying himself in unpaid overtime. And the climactic Act three: an empty apartment and a bitter Scotch.</p><p>Barba laid on his side next to you, watching your eyes twitch behind the lids. He reached out to stroke your hair for the last time.</p><p>Sure enough, you stirred at the touch, then groaned. “Mmm… Rafi? You’re back.”</p><p>“Hey cariño,” he whispered.</p><p>A drowsy smile was on your lips, and you shifted toward him affectionately. You were still half-asleep. Your eyes were closed, and you hadn’t remembered yet what he’d done.</p><p>It wasn’t fair of him, but he took advantage of the reprieve to press a loving kiss to your forehead.</p><p>You hummed and reached out with grabby hands, clutching at the crisp fabric of his shirt and vest. “Are you still dressed? <em>Take it off, baby!</em>” You giggled madly to yourself in a fit of humor that only made sense to the not-quite-conscious. You were adorable when you were goofy. He would miss moments like these most of all.</p><p>Yawning, your eyes finally squinted open and took him in. He braced for the moment your sleepy smile melted into a scowl.</p><p>But it didn’t. You kissed his cheek and murmured, “Happy anniversary, Raf.”</p><p>His breath hitched, stuck in his throat.</p><p>“Hey. Hey, what’s the matter?” You sat up on your elbow, brow knitting with concern. “Did something happen? Your work emergency? Is everyone—did someone get hurt?”</p><p>Working with the 16th precinct’s SVU division, Barba had been through tragic losses, personal and professional. He tried not to bring it home, but you worried about him anyway. “No. No, it was a long night, but we saved the case from falling apart.”</p><p>“Then what’s wrong?” You frowned. You sat up more and kept watching at him, studying him, though your eyes were only half-trained on the present. The rest of your expression was reviewing a memory or thought. Whatever was gnawing on your mind darkened your frown with each passing moment.</p><p>Here it was. A knot tightened in his stomach.</p><p>“Rafael… are you cheating on me?”</p><p>The knot dropped to the floor and bounced like a rubber ball. “No! I would never do that to you.” Of all the mistakes he’d made, that wasn’t one of them.</p><p>“OK. Good.” Your voice was tight and quiet, and you shifted like you had more to say. “Then why do you look like you have bad news?”</p><p>“I assumed… I… I walked out of dinner to take a work call—aren’t you furious?”</p><p>Your lips twitched. “Yeah, you’re kind of an asshole,” you said, somehow making it sound like a term of endearment. The brief smirk faded again. “You said celebrating our anniversary wasn’t important.”</p><p>Shit. That wasn’t what he meant at all, but Barba was an expert at making his significant others feel unwanted. How could he explain—?</p><p>“Are you bored of me?”</p><p>“No! God, no,” he cried. “How could I ever be bored with you?” His fingers caressed over your jawline as if you were the faded photograph of a lost love.</p><p>You grabbed his hand and pulled him down on top of you, sinking into the mattress. His arms bracketed you, holding part of his weight on his elbows so he only crushed you a little. You let out a slow sigh. “I barely see you anymore.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick and gravelly with what could have been mistaken for exhaustion, but you knew when he was on the verge of tears. As infrequently as his emotions slipped loose of his firm grasp, you always recognized it.</p><p>“Hey. It’s OK.” You lifted a palm to his cheek to soothe him. “I get it. You’re a big-shot ADA; you have plenty of options. If you want to break up, just be honest with me. It will hurt, but we’ll still be friends.”</p><p>“I don’t! That’s not—why are you being so understanding if you think I want to break up?”</p><p>“Would you rather I throw a tantrum? <em>I love you</em>, dummy. I don’t want you to be miserable pretending everything’s fine when being with me doesn’t make you happy. Just tell me how you feel.”</p><p>“I love you!” The force of his declaration made your eyes go wide. His chest heaved as everything he had been bottling up spilled out. “I love you, too, and I am terrified of losing you, but I’m going to. You were excited to celebrate today, and I abandoned you after promising I’d be there. You deserve better. Getting involved with you was selfish when I knew I could never give you the attention you deserve. I’ve tried—I have tried—but you should know, I’m not going to change. When I don’t take these calls, cases get lost, predators go free, and I can’t… I can’t lose because I was on a date. I’m sorry. I love you, but… I’m sorry.”</p><p>This was the part where you told him that wasn’t an excuse. You might offer him well-meaning (and probably correct) advice that the entire world wasn’t resting on his shoulders, and he needed a better work-life balance. This was where you gave him an ultimatum: work, or you? And where, as a younger man, he used to beg and make empty promises. But he was too old now to pretend he was someone he was not.</p><p>“So, you still want to be with me?” you asked—an unexpectedly soft question.</p><p>“For as long as you’ll put up with me.”</p><p>You gave a relieved sigh, your hands twining up his back to meet around the nape of his neck and pull him down again. His arms relaxed, and he let his weight sink on top of you. Your nose brushed the side of his, then he could feel your breath fanning soft and steady on his lips. Then your yielding lips were pressed to his, producing a tingling, fluttering sensation that traveled far beyond his mouth.</p><p>This wasn’t how the script went.</p><p>When he broke the kiss far enough to check in, you grumbled, a peevish smile grazing the salt of his skin, “Am I going to have to get a job in sex crimes? Or at the DA’s office? Your colleagues see so much more of you than I do.”</p><p>“I can turn off my phone the next time we go to dinner,” he offered, though you hadn’t demanded anything.</p><p>“That would be nice. Though I assume you’ll have to frantically check your messages the moment we get the bill?” you chuckled. Why were you laughing? He ruined your anniversary.</p><p>“Probably.” It made his blood pressure rise just <em>thinking</em> of an entire hour out of contact with his office. Christ, he <em>was</em> laughable. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about today, and… about every day.”</p><p>Your fingers wove through his hair and directed him to kiss you again.</p><p>“I’m fine,” you breathed—he sat up and began stripping out of his clothes while you spoke, since you weren’t kicking him out—“I called a friend right after you left, and we put a very expensive dessert on your tab.”</p><p>“Ah, a fair trade, then.” He smirked over his shoulder, pulling off his socks, and you lightly smacked his ass.</p><p>“I miss you, but I knew what I was getting into when we started dating.”</p><p>A pang of regret ripped through his heart. He crawled under the sheets in nothing but his boxers and laid beside you, wrapping his arms and legs around you like a possessive koala. You turned in his arms and stroked his dark chest hair a few times before burying your face in it. You always liked the soft feeling of it against your cheek, and he imagined your bodies melding into each other so you would never be apart.</p><p>“But it worries me,” you continued, “that this relationship isn’t a priority to you. You acted like our anniversary was meaningless. That… that <em>does</em> hurt.”</p><p>He held you tighter. One of your hands rested on his chest, and he found it, weaving his fingers through yours. “I said our <em>dating</em> anniversary wasn’t important, not our relationship.”</p><p>“Don’t lawyer me with technicalities,” you snorted.</p><p>“I was only thinking… our wedding anniversary will be the important one.”</p><p>
  <em>“Raf?!”</em>
</p><p>He swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about asking. If you…” He couldn’t manage to piece the rest of the question together.</p><p>“Are you proposing?”</p><p>He ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth, suddenly finding it dry. Your tone was more excited than shocked, a good sign. “I don’t know. Do you want me to be?” He raised his eyebrows in that charmingly dismissive way that this was not the appropriate time for at all, and so he corrected himself. “How can I ask you to marry me when this is what our lives will be like? Me running off for some emergency… coming to bed after you’re asleep…”</p><p>You squeezed his fingers and stared up at the dark ceiling. “Lately, it feels like all we have together is the five minutes at night when you wake me up getting into bed, and the five minutes before the alarm goes off. We wouldn’t even recognize each other awake.”</p><p>“That’s not enough, is it?” Barba said.</p><p>You turned to face him. The room was dimly lit with only the street lights from outside breaking through the curtain, but you could see the glassy shine in his eyes. “It’s enough for you, isn’t it?” you replied.</p><p>He had never thought about it like that. You saw exactly the same amount of each other, and he still wanted to spend the rest of his life coming home to you.</p><p>“If that’s all the time I have to love you,” you whispered, circling your thumb over the back of his knuckles, “then I’ll love you the best I can in those ten minutes.”</p><p>A stifled sob shook through his throat, and you were right there, buried in his neck, nibbling a trail of soothing kisses and murmuring beautiful promises: <em>It’s enough, so long as I’m with you. How could I leave something that feels so good?</em> He ran his hand over the contours of your warm skin and thought about the ways he could eke out more time for you, even if it was just a few extra minutes per day. Every second together was a gift, and he wasn’t afraid anymore. He could no longer hear the timer counting down to the end.</p><p>“I love you,” he said once more, but it sounded different. It felt different than all the hundreds of times he had said it before in his life. After forty-five years, he thought he finally understood what those words meant.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. An Amicable Breakup</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Bonus chapter: A prequel scene that was briefly referenced in the first part.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I don’t have time for a relationship. You deserve someone who can give you more.”</p><p>“Really?” you quirked a brow at the Manhattan Assistant District Attorney. “Is that really why? Or are you just letting me down gently?”</p><p>Rafael Barba blinked back at you. His tone of voice had been clipped and professional, but now the color of his face nearly matched the pink tie around his neck, and it gave the distinct impression that he <i>did</i> return your feelings. Otherwise, he would have brushed you off as easily as the press when he wasn’t taking questions.</p><p>“It’s OK if you don’t want to be with me, but tell me that. Because ‘you deserve more’ isn’t a no. I decide what I deserve, and I want to be with you.”</p><p>“I…” He stammered. His Adam’s apple rose and fell.</p><p>You took a bold step forward, closing the small distance between your two bodies, and lifted a cool palm to his burning red cheek. He sucked a sharp breath. On the slow exhale, when he remembered to breathe again, he allowed himself to touch you. As soon as his hands felt the contour of your hips under their fingertips, it was over. He tugged you closer, and then your lips were sliding together, his moans vibrating in your throat as his scent consumed you. That expensive cedar and citrus scent, as close as if you were wearing it yourself, his tongue probing the parting of your lips.</p><p>And then he pulled back at once, breath shaking. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I can’t. We can’t—”</p><p>“Why can’t we?”</p><p>“I’ve been down this road enough times to learn my lesson. It won’t end well. And I don’t want to see you look at me like...” He looked at you with mournful eyes, but all he saw was all of <i>them.</i> A line of broken hearts. Exes glaring at him with resentment where he used to see love. “I don’t want to destroy any affection you have toward me by being the worst partner you’ve ever had. It’s better if we just stay friends.”</p><p>Your lips tugged into a crooked smile. “Too late, Barba. I want you. So you have two options: either you kiss me a whole lot more for however long you can keep up a relationship, or our friendship? It’ll just be <i>awkward.</i>”</p><p>“Are you blackmailing me with romance?”</p><p>“Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll back off. Do you want me?”</p><p>“That is irrelevant—”</p><p>“Answer the question, counselor.”</p><p>He stood taller, rearing back in his posture as if to reclaim some sense of control. His eyes were a fierce storm—his id battling his higher logic for control. Then suddenly, his thumb was stroking up and down on your waist, an idle motion as he debated. You could have melted at the ticklish sensation. He noticed what he was doing, that his hand was still resting on your hip. He noticed, but couldn’t bring himself to break contact.</p><p>“I don’t want to ruin things between us,” he said in a quiet, somber voice.</p><p>“I don’t care how much you fuck up. So long as you don’t blame <i>me</i> for ruining everything, I’ll be happy.”</p><p>He threw you an incredulous look. “Is that how low your bar is?”</p><p>You glared back at him. “Hey,” you snapped, “Do I look like I’m coming from thirty years of happy marriage in which my spouse passed away, and after waiting the appropriate grieving time, I’m finally ready to date again?”</p><p>“Uh…”</p><p>“No. It’s not like you’re not the only person to fuck up their relationships—obviously I’m still single.”</p><p>He chuckled, eyes squinting softly. “That is… a fair point.”</p><p>“I know it is. I’m brilliant.” You declared haughtily, shooting him a grin. “I’m scared, too, but… it’s better to take a risk than resign yourself to being alone forever.”</p><p>“Do you really think we can go back to being friends if this doesn’t work out?”</p><p>“If you forgive my bullshit, then I’ll forgive whatever you do to piss me off. Deal?”</p><p>“Agreed,” he said in the motion of leaning forward to kiss you again. His arms wrapped around your back, warm and enclosing. Your fingers tangled in his hair, urging his demanding tongue onward. Deeper. He gave a wry little smile against your lips. “Here’s to an amicable breakup!”</p>
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